Obama Campaign Tried To Hurt Black Press

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The Obama campaign got mad and dropped advertising in black newspapers due to letter about its lack of spending in black newspapers, the National Newspaper Publishers Association Chairman Cloves Campbell said.

The Obama campaign had been asked to spend as much as $20 million with black newspapers, Campbell told this reporter’s Redding News Review radio program. The administration only ended up spending about $1 million of its $999 million in advertising budget with black newspapers – compared to President Clinton’s estimated $3 million when he was running.

Campbell said when he wrote a letter called “Show me the money” the Obama campaign pulling all the money from black newspapers that were not in swing states.

“They told me that I should apologize for writing the article,” he told Redding News Review.

The allegations come as the country is experiencing an extremely high unemployment rate in the black community and as the administration has been fending off reports of his cabinet being nearly all white and male. Obama is still far behind other administrations in cabinet diversity – Obama 4; Clinton 9 (in 8 years); Bush 6 (in 8 years).

On Friday, President Obama gave two blacks bigger titles within his administration, following criticism from the press about appointing blacks to key positions.

The announcement came as Obama just made permanent B. Todd Jones, who is black, as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The appointment is a non-cabinet level job.

What’s more, many listeners and readers of Redding News Review were shocked to learn just how white the White House has become under Obama. There was only one black, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett made available for a recent photo shoot for key officials in the president’s campaign and administration.

Still, Obama has said that his cabinet is diverse.

“So if you think about my first four years, the person who probably had the most influence on my foreign policy was a woman. The people who were in charge of moving forward my most important domestic initiative, health care, were women. The person in charge of our homeland security was a woman. My two appointments to the Supreme Court were women, and 50 percent of my White House staff were women. So I think people should expect that that record will be built upon during the next four years.”

The only person who is not white in the above quote is Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Maria Sotomayor.

NAACP chair Benjamin Todd Jealous last week said he hopes the president puts a black woman on the Supreme Court.

Rep. Charlie Rangel recently said there is “no excuse” for the lack of diversity in Obama’s recent choices and called the selections “embarrassing as hell.”

The Congressional Black Caucus has even gone as far as suggesting some of its members as possible cabinet level candidates. In all, it is said that the CBC provided 61 names to the Obama administration and none of those people have been appointed to positions.